{"id":7221,"date":"2021-02-23T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-02-23T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dvsnightingstg.wpenginepowered.com\/?p=7221"},"modified":"2021-08-26T09:57:21","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T13:57:21","slug":"putting-three-meals-on-the-table","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nightingaledvs.com\/putting-three-meals-on-the-table\/","title":{"rendered":"Putting Three Meals on the Table"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

At Gramener<\/a>, we each took up a personal data challenge over the month of December 2020. Since my family at home had been fighting over how to share efforts in the kitchen, I chose to track the food we cooked at home across three meals everyday. At the end of the month, I visualised our meals as \u2018Thali Charts\u2019 inspired by Dear Data<\/em><\/a> and a fascinating history of public awareness campaigns on diets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s a look at the chart I made and the process that led to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Here\u2019s a zoomable view of each section of the chart for easier reading:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The challenge: family food fight<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Under lockdown, our family had to adjust to living together again like many others. Chores became a major pain point with each of us having our own busy schedules. Cooking was the worst. My mother has always done most of the cooking, leaving her with less time for her own work. A good while into the lockdown, we set up a timetable for all five of us at home to balance the load of cooking. My sister, a culinary school aspirant, is also proficient in the kitchen and can put together a full meal. Till then my dad, grandmother and I would only occasionally help out, cooking the few dishes we knew. There was a lot of friction about \u201cnot knowing where ingredients are kept,\u2019\u201d \u201ctoo many vegetables being used up,\u201d or \u201cthe meal not being healthy enough.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The timetable wasn\u2019t maintained for long. With work and studies picking up, my mother ended up cooking most meals again. This December we tried a new way. Each of us was assigned a day in the week to cook all three meals. Each of us could decide what to cook and when to prepare it. With weekends being shared days, the advantage was that we\u2019d be free from cooking for the whole week after our day was done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To check how the system was working to maintain balance (or peace), we documented each of the three meals we cooked, every day over a month. Would we have a healthy diet with everyone cooking what they liked?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The data<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We recorded meals in a spreadsheet after every couple of weeks. The idea at the start was to check which meals each of us remembered. I thought this would reflect just how important particular meals were. This didn\u2019t work well since some of us could barely remember what we\u2019d cooked a couple of weeks ago. Later, I wrote down the meals myself each day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The spreadsheet used to record the meals we cooked.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

To figure out how healthy our diet was, we picked a few components to track. These were the parts we felt made our meals more or less healthy<\/p>\n\n\n\n